GHOP #37: Create a video showing how to translate Drupal

my d.o. username is acumen7 :)

Now claimed by mbossino.

I can't find a good, free, screencasting software on Mac. Should I settle for something Windows? That'd be ugly, from both a purely aesthetic point of view and a technical point of view.

Okay, I've recorded the first one using iShowU. See:
http://dedeca.kourge.net/hayatoki/drupal.htm

This required a lot of retakes. In the end I had to write a script, rehearse it, and read off of it to not sound stupid. QuickTime encoding settings are all according to this dojo article. I've been wondering if iMovie can be used to edit screencasts without compromising its quality, because if I can edit them, I wouldn't need so many retakes, plus I can add pretty banners and whatnot instead of a plain, head on screencast. Suggestions welcome.

This is really taking more time than I thought and I need more time to do this. Hopefully I can finish off this task before Thursday so that I can shoot for the S5 one.

Yes, this is quite a big task. If you record and edit the screencast in "full quality", and only transcode it for download at the end, there shouldn't be any loss of quality (iMovie should be fine)

You appear to have addressed just one of the six points highlighted in the request, so far?

Kourge, Yes, you can use iMovie for editing. I'd never survive making all of my videos if you couldn't. I've got a little trick to get my screencaps into iMovie without stupid compression loss of quality (no matter what settings I use iMovie makes my screencaps look like hell when I import them normally.) I keep meaning to do a video about how I do videocasts but haven't gotten to it yet. But basically this is what I do for good quality:
- Make screencap
- Open iMovie and create a new project
- Quit iMovie (the whole app, not just the project)
- Go into Finder and browse to the project
- Click the Open Package button that appears in the file info
- Go to the Media folder and copy your screencap into it
- Open iMovie back up. It will reopen your project (if not, go ahead and open the project you created.)
- While opening the project it will alert you that there is trash and ask if you want to view it. Say yes.
- Drag your screencap out of the trash can and into the iMovie clips area.
- Edit away.

My normal process is to capture the video only first, clean it up a bit in iMovie and then lay a separate audio track (under the Media section of iMovie there is a record button for Microphone.)

Luckily my original takes are in Apple Intermediate Codec. The one that I posted is transcoded to H.264.
@add1sun:
That's a very awesome and helpful device (because iMovie always crappifies any video imported), I've never thought of chugging the QuickTime movie right into an iMovie project package. Will do.

Claimed by birdmanx35.

Hi everyone. Just downloaded RC 2, and for the life of me I was unable to install
Drupal in another langauge- is there a screencast or tutorial for this, or someone
who wouldn't mind talking to me on IRC about this? Thanks very much.

You can check out this video (http://www.masteringdrupal.com/screencast/new-i18n-l10n-features-drupal-6) by greggles and you should definitely checkout Gábor Hojtsy's and Developement Seed's sites since they have done a ton of i18n work and have a bunch of information. I don't have links handy but they shouldn't be hard to find.

Sigh, that first video isn't working for me.

Wait, never mind!

Okay, so I'm still having the same problem. I follow the instructions with the french translation (and I've tried others) and after uncompressing it I get a folder called "fr" which has two .po files, a readme, and a license. I've tried placing these files directly in the drupal 6 folder, and placing the fr folder in the drupal 6 folder, placing it above the drupal 6 folder, placing the files in the french folder above the drupal 6 folder.

Can I skip installing in a different language? I've spent 2+ hours trying this, to no avail. It shouldn't be this hard to install in a different language, especially for a geek like me.

birdmanx35: Place it in ./profiles/default/translations/
By default the directory translations/ wouldn't exist in ./profiles/default/, you'll have to create one.

You would also want to merge fr.po with installer.po to create a new fr.po using msgcat. Although this is technically wrong (see #207401), it'll save you a lot of trouble.

Phew, thanks Kourge. I'm not sure how to use msgcat, so I just popped those files in there, and it seems to work- I guess I can switch languages after, right?

Okay, this task is done, and can be found at http://drupal.org/node/212321.

Thanks everybody!

My overall impression of this was that installing and translating in a different language is more complicated than I would have expected it to be. You made a few mistakes in the video and had to backtrack, which is fine, but I just wonder if there's not an easier way to do this. But I have never tried to do this myself, so there probably isn't.

So for my comments I'll assume that the way you demonstrated this is the best way (at least at the moment).

1.) It wasn't obvious why you needed to choose "installer" instead of French or English when installing. Is this because the French translator named it "installer"? If that's the case, perhaps you can file an issue to that translation's queue asking that it be renamed French installer. Or perhaps this is how it's supposed to be done. Any way, it was just a little unclear to me what was going on there.

2.) I wouldn't recommend that you put your real email address in. You might consider going back and blurring it out. You also showed it again later on when you showed how a user can switch his default language.

3.) Is it possible to keep the French language active after installation?

4.) You should add a slide at the beginning with the title of the screencast and ideally the URL of the associated handbook page. The Videocast Handbook page at http://drupal.org/node/62196 has a link to a nice Drupal oriented bumper you can use.

5.) Likewise, you should add a slide at the end (or the beginning) with the CC logo and the license you're giving to the video.

6.) Regarding the handbook page on d.o, are there any other handbook pages you could link to that have written instructions for doing what you demonstrate? That would be useful (if they exist) since the steps at the beginning are difficult to follow.

It's definitely pretty hard, and there is no easier way, unless you merge the files, which most people (including me) don't have the capability to do. You need some fancy-schmancy server command.

I don't mind putting my email up there.

I decided it wasn't worth editing, since I'd just add a bumper or too, and the quality would go down. Also, it'd take me forever to figure out. I butcher video editing, let me tell you. Aclight and I were just discussing this on IRC.

I don't think so, but I did link to another videocast (which pretty much makes my video redundant, it's 10x better).

Ok, that makes sense to me. We're tight on time with the GHOP task claiming deadline being tomorrow, and you've made it pretty clear on the blip.tv page as well as the handbook page what the license of the screen cast is, so we can do without having it in the video itself.

So on that note, I'm heading over to the GHOP tracker to mark this as closed. Great job with this!

Closed.